New Zealand Walk: The Pakihi Track for total seclu

The Pakihi Track

The Pakihi Track for total seclusion

By Jim Robinson

On the search for to.

tal seclusion, pristine native forest, crystal clear waters, and easy walking, few people will dispute Eastern Bay of Plenty’s Pakihi track is where you’ll find it.

As part of the Motu Trails, Pākihi Track is an historic stock track through the most impossibly sheer mountainsides, deep forest, sparkling rivers, and undeveloped hinterland - all this on a gently graded track just over half an hour’s drive from Opotiki.

The 20.3-kilometre Pākihi Track can be walked either up-and-back from the Pākihi Road (the northern trail exit is 23 kilometres south of Opotiki), or getting a drop-off at the top of the track on the Motu Road (about two hours’ drive from Opotiki) to walk it one way in five to eight hours.

The first thing you’ll notice is the well-formed nature of the track - it’s a delight in such a wilderness setting.

Dug painstakingly by pick axes, shovels, and explosives in the early 1900s, this twisting trail was intended to provide a route for Otara Valley farmers to move their cattle and sheep to the railhead near Matawai on the other side of the Raukumara Ranges.

It was once almost two metres wide the entire way. Along the trail you’ll see the major efforts made to create the gentle gradient, as you walk between the occasional mosscovered banks of deep wide channels that were sliced into ridges.

By the 1970s, the track had become blocked by debris and dropouts, so explosives and shovels were again used with New Zealand Forest Service teams (now DOC) reinstating the track for hunters and trampers.

Local DOC ranger Pete Livingstone was part of those working

Left: Hikers on the well formed track.

The Pakihi Track

for total seclusion

Above left: The Pakihi Track is popular with runners.

Below left: A hikers stops to admire one of the many tall trees. crews, and recounts living in portable cabins along the track, staying out in the wilderness for months at a time.

Years passed and again the track fell into disrepair, and after another massive effort by DOC the jungly track was reopened in 2012 as part of the Motu Trails.

Recently, the trail has had very regular maintenance by a Motu Trails Charitable Trust team led by trail manager Jim Robinson. Because the terrain is so dynamic, Robinson rides the trail most weeks to check for rockfalls, windfalls and slips, with maintenance sessions most weeks. You’ll also find there is barely any mud on the path whatever the weather, owing to the free-draining rock.

Beginning your walk high up on the Motu Road, the track drops off the road and meanders downhill through dense subtropical forest under a shady canopy - this is prime Urutawa Conservation Area, with majestic tawa, rimu, beech and ponga in every direction, as well as lichens, ferns and, lower down, pockets of bright green nikau.

Patches of the critically endangered New Zealand forget-me-not and endemic herb Myosotis pottsiana exist off the path deep in the forest, and Livingstone has recently found New Zealand mistletoe pirirangi near the start of the track (it has declined since the 1990s nationwide – being a favorite snack for the introduced possum).

If you’re lucky, you might see karearea/New Zealand falcon, kereru, North Island robin, wild deer, and a pair of whio on the river. You’re unlikely to see the perfectly camouflaged Hochstetter’s Frog, but it’s there – in fact, the Raukumara Rangers are the home of a genetically distinct population of this ancient frog.

As you walk, there is no sound pollution from civilization whatsoever: it’s just you, the sounds of the forest, and further down the valley the music of the dozens of gurgling, rushing creeks that feed the Pakihi River, which you’ll cross on some 24

wooden footbridges.

In the dry this water trickles, but after rain it roars. Be sure to watch your step too, the path itself may be gentle but the country is steep: look over the side of the track and see the bush disappearing to impossible depths.

You can imagine how challenging it would have been to brave the tortuous horse track that existed between Motu and Opotiki from the 1870s, prior to the cutting of the Pākihi, or the Te Kowhai /or local name of Kohia route before that which was used by Māori.

Once you’ve dropped about 300m, over 11 kilometers, you’ll come to a short sidetrack to the Pākihi Hut - just in time for lunch. This basic 6-bunk DOC hut was built in the late 1960s for hunters and walkers, and after a refurbishment it now has a covered-in veranda, a picnic table in the sun, and a water tank.

The grass clearing around it makes for a gorgeous spot to rest, with tall, lush forest rising up around you in Above right: Two hikers come out of a shaded area. Below right: The track goes beside the stream.

Great walking on the Pakihi and other tracks.

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The Pakihi Track for total seclusion

every direction. One option is to prepay for a hut pass to stay overnight (a bargain at $5 per night), enjoying the woodfire and keeping an ear out for calls of weka.

This area is the only remaining natural population of North Island weka (and were a source for translocations elsewhere) – and numbers are currently rocketing, with these weka now extending as far west as Whakatane and Taneatua.

According to Livingstone, overnighters at the hut can sometimes hear the calls of North Island brown kiwi. He has also picked up the echolocation calls of long-tailed bats (with the use of a bat detector), and says they can occasionally even be seen from the hut, just on dark over the summer period.

The remaining 10km of Pākihi Track continues with the water theme, beginning with a small but powerful waterfall in a shady gully, and it’s not long before you come across the modern 35-metre-long suspension bridge that spans the rushing Pākihi Stream.

This site is where the first stock bridge was constructed in 1914 to complete the track, only to be heartbreakingly destroyed by a flood just four years later in 1918. To the frustration of those local farmers, this was the nail in the coffin for the Pākihi Track as a stock route, and the Motu Road and then the Waioeka Gorge Road became the main routes between Opotiki and Motu instead.

As you cross the suspension bridge you’ll see the wooden remains of the supports to that old bridge on the far bank, with a hole where the strong cables were anchored.

You’ll follow the boulder strewn Pākihi Stream, staying about five to 15 metres above it, on track cut by explosives into the rocky bank.

In summer, take one of the short side paths down to the river for a dip in the clear, waist-deep water. Search the mossy river banks and you might find the carnivorous paua slug, a ‘semi-slug’ Schizoglossa gigantia found only in this region of North Island (you’ll see their tiny paua-shaped shells scattered right through the Urutawa).

When you’ve experienced the remote and wild environment of the

Above: This shelter is popular as place to have lunch and meet others.

Pākihi Track, you’ll recognise this is true Barry Crump country: the famous bushman author spent 10 years in the Pākihi Valley, where he wrote Wild Pork and Watercress (which inspired Taika Waititi’s movie Hunt for the Wilderpeople).

In fact, you can stay in Crump’s infamous A-frame hut at the northern end of the trail: local couple Christian and Kelly Subritzky, who own Weka Wilds, took Crump’s neglected hut from the bush, which Crump built in the early 1980s and left in 1991. The couple restored it and now offer it as an accommodation option in addition to their standard guest quarters.

Weka Wilds is a great place to stay when walking the track - Christian and Kelly can whip you up a homecooked meal or woodfired pizza, and if you’re keen on hunting or fishing can advise you where to go (they’ve lived in the valley for 20 years).

There are also places to stay in Motu, Opotiki, and nearby Te Waiti.

Pākihi Track is part of Motu Trails, which is one of 22 Great Rides on Ngā Haerenga, New Zealand Cycle Trails. The other sections are, the Dunes Trail in Ōpōtiki, Motu Road, and Rere Falls Trail, which is an onroad journey to Gisborne. Pākihi and the Dunes Trail are shared use, with walkers about half the total trail use.

Mobile coverage is patchy at best on Pākihi Track, and a personal locator beacon is recommended. With a difference of 400 vertical metres from start to finish (the Motu Road Pakihi Track entrance is at 500m), dressing warm in layers is key.

Find the Motu Trails Cycleway on Facebook/Instagram, or at www. motutrails.co.nz.

For a brochure/map and booklet, posted to you free anywhere in New Zealand, just email jim@motutrails. co.nz or message the Facebook page with your address.

Skye Wishart is an outdoors-loving freelance writer who authored the 2019 book ‘The Brilliance of Birds’, and specialises in science, environment and tourism content.

Above: The Pakihi Stream runs through a forested area.